


Burn, Not Fade Away

by OctarineSparks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, pre-destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2383628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctarineSparks/pseuds/OctarineSparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sort of a prequel to I Hope It's Somewhere Good. </p><p>When Castiel dies, it's not at the hands of anyone else. He simply runs out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn, Not Fade Away

There were moments, moments like these, when Castiel was moving, working towards something, fighting, laughing, moments when he could almost forget that he was dying. But the struggles, the fight to bring Dean back to him, had cost him so much more than heartache. The end of his days drew ever closer. He thought he was ready. He was so tired from fighting, so tired from everything, that he was almost looking forward to the rest. But then Dean had been cured, made whole again by the flicking, failing light of everything that Castiel had left to give, and suddenly everything was new. Dean's eyes, now clean of the darkness that had settled there, seemed to look at him differently. He was more careful, more measured in everything he said, knowing that he could never repay his friends for saving him from his very worst nightmare. Tactile, too, though never shy of a friendly grasp or needful embrace, he was somehow constantly touching, as if just to remind himself that he was allowed. Dean's touch had come to represent something all at once wonderful and painful in Castiel. Relief and sorrow, thankful and scared. Desire, he thought, for more than Dean can give. 

He was aware all the time now that he didn't have long left. He felt tired, sometimes he even slept. The sleep itself was a bitter pill, a respite from the growing fear of his own mortality and yet stolen time from his life, hours spent calm and unmoving when he could be doing so much more. He had come to look upon the hours that he slept as little slices of death, a sample of what awaited him very soon. 

He could see that Dean was wrestling with the coming dark days as much as Castiel was himself. Guilt and anger, at himself and the whole damn world, at God, at Metatron, that an angel as noble as he should ever have to simply fade away. He spent hours and hours absorbed in books, or thinking of ways to restore Castiel's lost grace. He was becoming desperate, suggesting dark ideas that lingered on the edge of the demon he used to be. Take another angel's grace, recharge, until we find another more permanent solution. Castiel refused, of course. He would not harm a fellow angel, would not make them go through what he himself was suffering. He accepted that he must die, but he was still afraid. 

He tried to help in the research, and when a problem arose to get in the way, he helped with that too. Distractions, little distractions, he told his friends. Anything to quiet his troubled mind. It wasn't really working, not anymore, not since the fighting hurt and exhausted him, and robbed him of a little more life. 

They returned one night to the bunker, bloody and bruised all three of them. Castiel could have healed them, but he didn't out of respect for their wishes. Sam refused, quietly, speaking as though Castiel were moments from slipping away. Dean raged and shouted, angry that Castiel would even suggest such a thing. He didn't even seem to notice the pain as he thrust the needle into his arm, over and over, muttering the word 'selfish' under his breath, though Castiel knew him well enough to understand that he was talking to himself. 

Dean told him that for Castiel, the fight was done. He wouldn't be coming with them anymore. He wouldn't be sitting in the back seat of the Impala, his troubled mind filled with those old songs that Dean seemed to like so much, and Sam's sensible voice giving advice and warnings, veiled in the sarcastic rapport that amused Castiel no end. Castiel objected. He said he had to fight. He told Dean about the distractions. 

Later that night, Sam had departed to sleep off the worst of his injuries. Dean was once again knee-deep in angel lore. Castiel could have told him at once that there was nothing in those old books that could save him, but he refrained. He was not the only one in need of distraction. 

He took up a book himself, a useless thing whose words filtered through his eyes but stopped there. He glanced up, and saw Dean watching him. It was not a concerned look, more of a focused one. If Castiel didn't know any better, he would have said that Dean was trying to commit him to memory. Making sure he was still there. 

Dean rolled his shoulders, unashamed to be caught staring, but he said nothing. After a moment, he returned to his book. Five minutes after that he threw it to the floor. 

"This is crap!" he shouted, pushing his seat back angrily and getting to his feet. Castiel rose in time with him. He could see Dean's anger, it crawled along the hunter's skin like an infection, oozing out of him like something hot and unclean. This anger will not die, not even with Castiel. Dean will carry this anger with him always, burying it deeper and deeper, until it cracks his very soul and makes him that much darker. It was more than Castiel could stand. 

He crossed the room, placing a hand on Dean's shoulder. So often these days it was Dean who was the first to touch, but right now, right now, Castiel wanted to feel the other man's warmth beneath his fingers. He wanted to remind himself that it was worth it, that he would give everything all over again to save Dean Winchester. His fingers dug firmly into Dean's flesh, and the anger leapt from Dean's skin and settled on Castiel's own. 

"Dean, please," he said softly. Dean looked over at him, and the fire in his eyes dwindled down to nothing in the space of a second. This, Castiel thought, is why. This is why I fell. This is why I fought. This is why I am dying. Because nothing in the world is worse than looking at Dean and seeing only dead blackness looking back. Dean's eyes, his beautiful green eyes, were always Castiel's anchor. He would lose himself in there for days given the choice, and he knew in that moment that he would die a little easier if they were the last thing he ever saw. 

Dean blinked, holding Castiel's gaze as though he was keeping the angel there with just a look. As if turning his head away would cause Castiel to fall the floor, lifeless and cold. He moved closer, Castiel's arm bending at the elbow where it still hadn't moved from his shoulder. 

"Cas," he said, wretched and broken. Castiel tried to smile, but he just couldn't. He thought it was perhaps not so prideful to know that his death would cause Dean to grieve. He knew that Dean loved him, would do anything for him. He knew that he was trying to. 

Dean's hand lifted from his side and settled loosely on Castiel's outstretched arm. It hung heavy, the weight welcome and reassuring and something much stronger all together. Castiel felt a rush deep inside him, it pooled in his chest and made his heart ache. For Dean, he thought. Always. 

"You can't," Dean whispered, but he didn't finish. He didn't need to. Castiel could die, and he would, very soon. There was no one left to pray to, and there were no more deals to be made. 

"It's ok," Castiel said softly, knowing that it wasn't. He hated this all at once. He hated that his impending death was causing this cold friction between them, sullying the one thing Castiel held onto above all others. He and Dean, whatever they were, had been his cause since he had pulled him from Hell, the edges of his wings burnt and blackened as eternal fire chased him from damnation. He remembered feeling right, as he gripped Dean so tightly, so scared that he would let him fall. Of course, in the end, Castiel had been the one that had fallen, in a hundred different ways. 

"How? How is it ok?" Dean demanded, a flash of anger creeping back into his eyes as his fingers tightened on Castiel's arm. Castiel didn't know how to answer. He didn't want to have this conversation. He wanted his moments back. He wanted his distraction. 

He reached up with his free hand and grabbed a fistful of Dean's shirt. If the hunter was surprised he didn't let it show. His lips were set in a firm line, and his eyes shone with something not new, but stronger than it had ever been before. Castiel wondered if they were always heading here, if they were both the sort to wait until it was too late to finally stand up and just take from the world to which they had given so much. 

Castiel flinched, unsure if he should go on. His tongue toyed with his bottom lip, and Dean's eyes flicked there almost imperceptibly before settling back on the brilliant blue. The air was fraught and thick, every muscle in the room was taught. The silence was deafening. The tension was almost too much to bear. Castiel wanted to break it, but he didn't know how. 

Dean could not save Castiel completely, but he had been saving him in little ways for years and years and years. 

"Do it," he said, his voice hard but breaking just a little. 

Castiel's energy didn't leave him but focused into one action as he pulled Dean close and pressed their lips together. It was strange, he thought. Dean should taste like fire and ice, but he was warm and cool and smooth instead. He was familiar. He was everything. 

Dean shifted on his feet, bringing his hands up to Castiel's face, sliding them to the back of his neck. Little distractions, he thought. A kiss before you die. Before we both do. 

It didn't last for very long. It felt somehow hollow and meaningless. The idea was there, the idea that Dean was only giving comfort to a dying man, and though Castiel didn't want to believe it, he thought with humourless reason that doubt was the only thing he had ever been good at. They pulled apart, and he expected Dean to look shocked or pitiful. He didn't. He simply looked sad. 

Lesser men would perhaps have wanted to talk about it, but it had been clear for weeks that Castiel just didn't have the time. Dean smiled, an action laced with heartbreak, and turned away. Castiel was scared that he might apologise. He couldn't think of anything worse. 

Dean however, remained silent. He bent down and scooped the book from where he had thrown it to the ground, a few minutes and a lifetime ago. Castiel watched him, nervous and afraid. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next.

"I'm going to bed," Dean said, but there was no invitation there. Castiel didn't even think he wanted one. To go from what they were to the ultimate of what they could be in so short a space of time felt wrong somehow. He knew enough about humanity to know these things couldn't be rushed, and never had Castiel been so angry that he didn't have the luxury of that. Rushed, or not at all, so Castiel chose the latter. 

Dean left him without saying goodnight. There were no goodbyes in the life of a Winchester. They were too hard, too final, and death had become so cheap to them that Castiel actually believed that Dean was still holding on to the idea that he could be saved. He wouldn't take that away from him. Dean had steadily been losing all that he held from the moment he had been born, and all he had left now was his brother and his hope. 

Castiel was always tired, but his lips still tasted of Dean and he was unwilling to let the sensation be lost in sleep. He waited until he heard the door of Dean's bedroom slam shut, (that anger, that righteous anger), and headed for the door of the bunker. 

The icy air outside hit him like a knife to the chest. He didn't welcome the sensation. It was just a reminder of how graceless he had become. With an irritated sigh, he remembered his trench coat, different from when he had begun but the meaning behind it remained the same. When people spoke of him, they would always mention the coat, and he had begun to look at it as something as close to an identity as he could manage. It almost made him laugh. No place in Heaven, and no place on Earth, but he always had his ridiculous coat. Or at least he would have, he thought with a frown, had he not left it in his room. Sighing, he hesitated for just a moment before taking Dean's jacket down from the hook by the door. He was certain Dean wouldn't mind. Castiel thought that perhaps he would even understand. 

It was, as he had expected it might be, too large. His strength had always come from his grace, whereas Dean was forced to rely on the limitations of his humanity, and how far he could push them. Dean was strong and well-muscled and solid; Castiel had never needed to be. It fell onto his frame and the sleeves slipped past his fingertips. It amazed him that Dean could still make him, an angel, a solider, a leader, feel so small. The scent of engine oil and smoke from a thousand ghostly bonfires almost overwhelmed his senses, the essence of Dean compacted into something that made his heart ache. 

He stepped outside and took a deep breath. Autumn was well and truly upon them now. It seemed apt to Castiel that he should die along side Mother Earth, even if for him there would be no resurrection in the Springtime. 

His breath fogged from his lips as he turned his eyes skyward. It really was so beautiful. A miracle. Not for the first time did Castiel feel a wrenching anger at his brothers and sisters for not truly appreciating the majesty of their Father's creation. From the sparkling stars that were scattered in the inky night sky to the frost-covered leaves that crunched underfoot, Castiel was awed and humbled. He walked slowly towards a familiar black machine, and placed his hands gently on the sleek bodywork. 

There was pain gathering in his chest, through his heart and beyond, and he shook, leaning on to the Impala now for support rather than comfort. Somehow he hadn't believed it would be happening so soon, so soon. He was seized with the sudden desire to run back inside the bunker, to wake his sleeping friends and just be near them as he slipped away. He was scared to die. He was terrified to die alone. But he stilled himself. He thought it would be kinder on them all if he simply let them sleep. One more night of peace, even if it was tainted with the knowledge of what was to come. 

With a small amount of struggle, he managed to heft himself up onto the hood of the car, lying with his back agains the windshield as he had seen Dean do a thousand times before. He looked up at the stars. They were, he reflected, a poor substitute for Dean's eyes, but that didn't make them any less miraculous. So far away, and so many of them burnt out years ago. He smiled to himself softly. Though the stars themselves were gone, the light they left behind still remained. Castiel found a beautiful warmth in the idea, and in his last moments, Castiel aspired to be like a star. He aspired to be Dean's star, and allowed himself the comfort of knowing that perhaps he had been all along. 

The next morning, as dawn's cold, bright fingers crept up on the horizon, Dean was awoken by a tug at his soul. He knew what had happened before he even opened his eyes. He had suspected he would be able to sense Castiel's passing even if they were apart. Castiel called it a profound bond, and Dean was far too frightened to call it anything else. 

Still, the thought slipped into him like ice, and even though his heart was breaking he leapt from his bed and charged down the halls to Castiel's room, crying the angel's name from his lips like a prayer. His shouting roused Sam, who emerged from his room, not fogged in sleep but tight with worry, almost colliding with Dean in the doorway. 

Perhaps Sam and Castiel did not share a bond as deep as he and Dean, but Sam knew his brother almost better than he knew himself. One look at Dean's face told him all he needed to know. He felt almost stupid thinking it, but to Sam it looked already as though Dean had lost some vital part of himself. 

Without a word he joined his brother, both of them rushing to Castiel's room in a way that felt nothing like fast enough. Dean slammed the door wide, his face falling when he saw that the room was empty. "Cas?" he whispered, his voice so laced with misery that Sam felt his heart drop from just the sound of it. Dean turned to Sam, desperation in his eyes. 

"Where is he?" Dean asked, looking to his little brother in the way Sam himself had looked to Dean many times over the years. With hope, with something close to helplessness in his voice. Help me. 

Sam looked about, pointlessly. He didn't know what to say. 

"Did he just... Fade away or something?" Dean asked, his eyes roving over the room, as if looking for some telltale sign that the angel had been there. Had died there. His eyes came to rest on Castiel's trench coat, and it was in that moment that his whole world fell apart. 

He reached out as though to grab it from the back of the chair where it had been haphazardly thrown, but then stopped himself in the last minute. Sam wondered if he would ever touch it, or anything else in this room, ever again. If Castiel was really dead and gone, vanished like a phantom, Sam could easily picture this room remaining untouched for as long as they called the bunker home, as close as a grave for the angel as they could manage. 

Dean sat down on the corner of the still-made bed, his head hanging, silent tears dripping to the floor. Sam was so lost. They had lost people before, and every time it had been someone they both loved, someone they had both lost together. Now he felt as though he was intruding. Castiel was as close as a brother as far as Sam was concerned, and the idea that he might be gone was almost too much to comprehend. But between Dean and Castiel there had always been something, something unmentioned, unacknowledged, but they all knew it was there. Perhaps someday, Sam would tell himself, but things always seemed to be getting in the way. 

Dean looked up, sudden and with an anger Sam knew well and had been expecting. This relentless anger against death, the helpless wrath, like King Canute shouting at a heedless, indifferent tide. Sam knew that Dean was itching to lash out, to destroy and ruin, but he also knew that he would never do that here, in this room. 

"Dean," he said softly, all but volunteering to be the outlet for Dean's anger. In a sick way, he almost wanted his brother to hit him, to rage and to blame him, just to give him a momentary distraction from the pain. He felt his heart drop another inch at the thought. Distractions were all that Castiel had in the end, and as he looked at his brother he firmly believed that now they were all Dean would have too, until his dying day. 

Dean got to his feet, pushing past Sam. Though Castiel's death was a different thing entirely, the way this scene was due to play out would stay the same. Dean would feel suffocated, but the rooms and by his anger, and leave, and Sam would remain behind, left to pick up the pieces of his own grief but right now he thought that was how it ought to be. Later they would grieve together, but right now Sam had to put his own sense of loss on the back burner and deal with his big brother. 

He followed Dean to the door, his face a picture of concern. Other times his brother might just install himself at some bar, get steadily drunker and then sleep the night away in the backseat of the Impala. This time, however, he was afraid, because though he was certain his brother would never do anything stupid, he also knew that this was a new kind of pain that Dean was in no way prepared for. 

"Dean," he said again, but Dean did not answer. Instead he reached out to take his jacket, but of course his hand met only air. 

"Did you move my jacket?" he asked Sam, but his tone quickly calmed to one that was so subtly tinged with hope. He's not dead, he just went out for a walk. Took my jacket because he couldn't be bothered to go and get his coat from his room. That's all, Dean told himself, trying to drown out the screaming that came from the wound in his soul. 

He opened the door to the bunker and stepped out, knowing what he was going to see the instant before he did. Sam came up beside him and placed his hand gently on his shoulder. Dean thought the attempt at comfort would irritate him, that no one else could understand how much he was hurting, but instead he felt himself leaning into the touch, crumbling all at once and falling into his brother, until they were both kneeling on the frozen earth, Dean's sobs cutting through the silent morning air. 

Over his brothers shoulder, Sam looked at the body of Castiel. He looked as though he were sleeping, his head tilted to one side, an arm across his chest and his left leg raised at the knee. Sam had caught Dean like this, sleeping on the hood of his car after one beer too many under the stars. Of course, Dean and indeed Castiel never slept on the imprint of ashen wings. 

Sam would have been in awe had he not felt so wretched. They were so big, so wide, so beautiful, and that was just the imprint that they had left behind. They stretched far beyond the car and even the driveway, stopping well into the frosted grass. But what captivated Sam the most was not the size or the majesty. It was the way that where the wings had touched the windshield, the glass was cracked, the shape unmistakable as they disappeared behind Castiel's shoulders. In that moment, Sam appreciated the difference between angel and angelic, but also living and dead. 

Sam let Dean weep for as long as he needed to. He was more than willing to hold his brother until the night drew in. The sight of Castiel's lifeless form left him with little desire to do anything else. How could it be that someone they had known for so short a time could suddenly leave such a gaping wound behind with their death? It didn't make sense, but their lives had always been patchwork. Castiel remained, through all things, power and family and love. Sam felt Dean shift in his arms, and he looked down. He was almost angry to see that Dean looked ashamed. 

"Sam," Dean choked out, but Sam shook his head firmly. 

"Don't you dare," he said, his own voice breaking. "Don't you dare say you're sorry." Sam couldn't stand to think of his brother being ashamed for this, for the rawness of his grief, and all of his love. 

Dean nodded and separated himself from his brother. It was a wrench, for now that he was no longer howling out his pain like a wounded animal, everything felt too bright and hard and real. Sam hung back while Dean crossed the space between himself and Castiel. Sam had been amazed by Castiel's wings, but he doubted if his brother could even see them at all. 

"Cas," Dean whispered. Sam could hear every word, and knew that Dean didn't care. There was no point pretending anymore, no point in lying. "Cas, you shouldn't have been alone."

He placed a hand on Castiel's, the one that the angel had rested over his heart. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Castiel's. The angel was icy cold, and Dean's heart ached with the idea that he must have been gone for quite a while. He couldn't understand why he hadn't awoken, why that spark in his soul hadn't roused him and told him to go to Castiel as he died. But he knew. He hadn't want to believe that Castiel was dying, and he had been denying it so fervently that the belief went right down to his very soul. 

He drew back from Castiel's body, looking down at his eyes. They were closed, and the thought that he would never again see that brilliant blue took him apart once more. He crouched down at the side of his beloved car and wept into the dirt. 

They buried him in the gardens of the bunker, the hard and frigid earth making long work of the whole thing, for which Dean was grateful. Distraction, all over again. Sam had asked about burning him, saying that Castiel was a hunter and he deserved to go out like one. Dean shook his head and said that angels didn't come back as ghosts. He almost wished that they did. 

They marked the grave with a wooden cross, into which Dean had carved the legend 'J. Novak' with his pen knife. Sam knew it wasn't defiance or Dean's inability to accept that Castiel was gone. It was something far more hollow and much more worse, his brother's first steps to pretending that the angel had never been there at all. 

For days there was silence in the bunker, until one day Dean grabbed the keys to the Impala and stormed out without a word. When he returned five hours later, the windshield had been replaced. 

Castiel's room remained untouched, locked up and abandoned but never, ever forgotten. Sam would walk past it slowly, trying to remember how it had felt to know that there was an angel on the other side of the door, reading and watching television and acting every inch like the humanity he held so dear. He would never fool himself into thinking he could still hear the memory of Castiel moving around in there. His brother was proof enough that the angel was truly gone, and in Dean's anger it seemed as though memories of the angel were an unwelcome, unwanted thing. 

He began to worry about Dean, about the way he was pointedly not mentioning Castiel, not saying a god damned word. He wanted to shake him and shout, rage and tell him that he knew the truth, and you couldn't just lock the memory of the person you loved in a room with all their old things and walk away. 

He should have known better, should have expected that his brother would always turn around and surprise him when it came to Castiel. 

He had been forced to enter Castiel's room. The last time he had seen the book he required it had been held between the angel's pale fingers. He opened the door, feeling hollow and almost inconsolable as he cast his eyes around. 

It was so damn noticeable, just because it wasn't there. 

Castiel's trench coat, no longer on the back of the chair. For a moment, Sam feared that Dean had taken it and destroyed it, driven mad by the idea that it remained within the bunker still, almost everything that Castiel was an undoubtedly still heavy with the scent of the angel. Sam had never really paid it much mind, but he dimly recalled that Castel had always smelled of mint and something sharp. But he knew, somewhere inside him, that the coat was still in the bunker. If he had been that sort of bastard, he knew he could have found it in his brothers room in a heartbeat. Not bundled up under his pillow or nestled beneath his sheets; Dean would never do anything so crass. It would be folded, neatly, probably in some sort of plastic wrapping, where his brother could look at it and hold it when it all got too much, waiting for the day when he would see his angel again. In time, Dean would get better, maybe even smile again, years down the road. He would fight and he would win, and he would probably ache and hurt again, but he would live. Because Dean would know what was waiting for him at the end of that road. 

Sam retrieved the book from the nightstand, and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.


End file.
